The packaging industry is constantly developing in the pursuit of more efficient packaging processes, which are more environmentally friendly and offer a greater level of care and conservation as far as the products to be packaged are concerned. Over recent years, said development has tended decisively towards obtaining new forms of presentation, especially in the cosmetic sector, which combine both the external design of the package itself and the arrangement of the product contained therein, the latter aspect relating directly to filling technologies (machinery and processes).
New forms of presentation bestow various benefits on the packaged products, at both aesthetic and operational level. Aesthetic benefits are particularly relevant, making said products more commercially attractive within an increasingly demanding and selective market. Operational benefits mainly relate to a suitable way of using the product, enabling the various compositions from which it is formed to be conveniently mixed, in order to achieve the optimal effect expected from the same.
Meanwhile, packaging design and filling technologies have been developed in order to find these new forms of presentation. Nevertheless, even if said developments do not seem to present limits in terms of package design, existing filling technologies continue to present significant technical drawbacks.
Therefore, pieces of apparatus which make it possible to fill a package with two or more compositions, which usually have distinct physical and chemical properties, in accordance with a product contained therein, which has a certain filling pattern, is known.
The technology used to this effect constitutes inline fillers, in which all filling stations are aligned and parallel to the production line. These machines only facilitate low and medium speed production, with a maximum of 150 units being produced per minute. These machines operate in an indexing manner. In other words, the various operations or stages (loading packages, filling, unloading packages etc.,) involved are carried out intermittently according to a sequential order. In turn, this simplifies the number of mechanisms and controls, which is why, within the range of speeds within which work can be carried out, it is usually the most profitable option.
Nevertheless, when it comes to filling packages at higher speeds or in other words, filling more than 150 units per minute, with two or more compositions, formed inside a filling pattern, the technical difficulty increases.
In monophase products formed by one single composition and even for multiphase products formed by more than one composition, which do not generate filling patterns but are rather only mixed just before being introduced into the package, this technical jump is achieved using rotary filling machines, also known as “rotary fillers”. These machines work continuously or in other words, the various operations or stages (loading packages, filling, unloading packages etc.,) carried out are done so on various packages simultaneously.
The rotary filling machines consist of a filling carrousel, in which the various filling stations, with their corresponding dosage means, are located in the same diameter. Said carrousel rotates constantly. The packages are introduced from the production line to the filling carrousel, known as an “infeed starwheel”. The packages are thus deposited on a base, which can be displaced in the direction of a vertical axis. Once the process has come to an end, the packages are extracted from the carrousel by means of an “outfeed starwheel”. Both starwheels rotate in synchronisation with the filling carrousel and are tangent with the production line.
A machine formed in a production line in this way is capable of reaching very high speeds (1000 units per minute). The main advantage of it stems from the fact that the package always moves at a constant speed and the machine maintains a constant rotational movement, thus preventing the packages from stopping or being removed alongside the problems resulting in the event of demanding high speeds from inline fillers.
Nevertheless, in contrast to inline fillers, the various operations are not carried out in an index-linked way but rather continuously. As a result, not all the packages are filled at the same time, but rather each one of the packages in the carrousel can be found at a different stage of the filling cycle, for example. The filling stations therefore operate independently. In other words, each one of them should be configured to carry out as many operations as necessary in order to fill each package. Therefore, bearing in mind that the filling stations which make it possible to generate filling patterns require a significant number of operations and have a considerable number of compositions linked to them, their use in rotary filling machines is somewhat complicated at a technical level and gives rise to extremely elevated costs.
Mainly for this reason, the existence of rotary filling machines which facilitate rotational movement between the package and dosage means, around the vertical axis and the possibility of varying the relative distance between the package and the dosage means in a horizontal plane perpendicular to said vertical axis, is not recognised for the filling of packages with two or more compositions, which form a complex filling pattern therein.
The rotary filling machine, object of the present invention, resolves the problems set out above, via a formation which amplifies the relative movements between the package and the dosage means, thus achieving medium and high speed levels of industrial production and a greater number of benefits in the packaging of monophase and multiphase products. It may, for example, improve the distribution of a monophase product, exerting a centrifugal force on the same or create a countless number of filling patterns for a multiphase product in a package.